Newtown gives US a real chance to limit 14th Amendment protections

The nation finally has a fulcrum to push against, and it's way past due.

In the wake of 911 and the P.A.T.R.I.O.T. A.C.T. aren't equal protection and due process just more troublesome outdated ideas that get in the way of the heroes really being able to protect us?

How can we possibly overlook such a great opportunity to liberate our nation from the burden placed on it by messing around worrying about the equal protection and due process rights of SPECIAL INTERESTS?

Why should the people protecting us have to make pretzels out of themselves trying to narrowly define the classes of 'crazy' people we KNOW we need to act against?. It just prolongs our pain and MORE PEOPLE WILL DIE!

Why can't we just create a great big net, and in the words of Donald Rumsfeld "SWEEP THEM ALL UP!"?

Damn. I don't see any problem. If we could just get rid of these moldy old documents that get in the way of our safety, this would be a better regulated America.

Really, there should be absolutely no question about this. OUR CAUSE IS JUST! Ending Mass Killings is a WORTHY CAUSE.

In finding the IMMEDIATE, FACILE, BROAD REACHING, UNCOMPLICATED SOLUTIONS that the PEOPLE DEMAND to REDUCE THE PEOPLE'S RISKS, no conflict of rights or values can be allowed to stand in the way.

It's time, NO, It's PAST TIME to get rid of the cause of the quagmire that bogs us down in piddly legal details...

Wow! I woke up in the nightmare before Christmas.

and yes, I know the database already exists.
and yes, I know SCOTUS has ruled it's ok to limit gun ownership due to mental illness
and yes, I know that most states don't fully comply because of conflicts with HIPAA

and yes, I actually do think guns should be kept out of the hands of people _adjudicated_ to be incompetent to handle them or to be a danger to themselves and others

7. Mayor Thomas M. Menino of Boston and Mayor Michael Bloomberg of New York City, cochairmen of Mayors

Against Illegal Guns, along with 750 other Mayors want Obama to create a central data base that will include mental-health data on people.

We already have the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, or NICS, and now the new health care record system that can easily share data.

All that's needed is to identify the Diagnosis Related Group codes that place a person at risk of becoming a mass murderer and add their name and appropriate data and create the central data base Bloomberg and his mayors want.

Even better, identify the prescription drugs that might trigger a mass murder episode and whenever a patient fills a prescription add that incident to the central data base. That would give our Attorney General all the data needed to monitor in real time people who science and health care professionals have profiled as mass murder risks.

8. Yes, DARPA doesn't need to invent any software

the basic software to search billing codes is already available and used by Infection Control and in epidemiolgical studies. This would be pretty easy to implement

What bothers me is there is really no precision in those billing codes with respect to distinguishing between people. The actuarial risk of gun violence among the mentally ill is very small (even if we accept that all 35 of the mass murderers in the US have been mentally ill)

And SSRIs and other psychoactive drugs may be used on disorders that have very low risks of violence, even if SSRIs are known to sometimes elevate risks of violence in some cohorts--mostly the young.

Moreover, because an estimated 66-75% of people with mental illness don't get to treatment, this approach would actually miss a big fraction of people the enforcement would want to catch.

My personal concern has nothing to do with gun ownership, its about targeting a class of people already discriminated against, and possibly making the discrimination worse.

I have never seen what information comes back to a gun store on a background check. So I don't know if it conflates those adjudicated to be blocked from purchasing a gun due to mental illness with criminals. And I don't know if it identifies them as denied for mental illness. I don't know how privacy restrictions may or may not limit a clerk in a gunshop from surfing the system for information on neighbors.

I think reasonable people can see how either of those might be troubling, particularly if the NCIS is made available to more than gun shops. Access to government databases has a history of expansion.

9. All the pieces are in place and when integrated can use cell phones to track movement of those

identified as mass-murder risks.

With that system in place, we may as well allow HSA to add its “right-wing extremists” list and Education to track people who have defaulted on student loans, and don't forget drivers with unpaid parking tickets.